Patience is what Ernie Kent learned in Saudi Arabia 20 years ago, when he coached a team with few English-speaking players.

Now, with communication considerably easier, Kent is getting it done quickly at Oregon. Just two years after an initial 13-14 season spent changing the personnel, style and attitudes of the preceding Jerry Green regime, Kent's Oregon team is 16-4 overall, 7-2 in the Pac-10 and ranked No. 24 heading into tonight's game at No. 2 Stanford.

The Ducks have not had a 20-win season and an NCAA Tournament berth in the same season since 1945, and they have never finished a season ranked by the Associated Press. The former feat almost certainly will be accomplished, and the Ducks have a chance at the latter.

An infusion of junior-college talent, an up-tempo style and a renewed respect for the tradition of Oregon basketball have the Ducks in contention to win a conference title for the first time since that 1945 season.

It's reviving memories of Dick Harter's Kamikaze Kids of the mid-1970s, when the Ducks' ridiculously aggressive and passionate style helped them beat UCLA three straight times in the days when the Bruins almost never lost. Kent was on that Oregon team, arriving from Rockville, Ill., as a Parade All-American with the nickname of "Million Moves." Knee injuries ruined his college playing career, but not his respect for the tradition Harter instilled.

Those Ducks were a source of wonderment. Washington's players reportedly once wore fake glasses and noses during pregame warm- ups and just stared at Harter's inexplicable Ducks.

According to legend, Harter's Oregon players would sprint back to the bench at timeouts, sometimes diving to their seats, because the last player back would get benched. And they were physical. "They just fouled you every time at all five positions," Stanford coach Mike Montgomery said of those Oregon teams that featured Ron Lee and Greg Ballard. "We used to call it the Harter Theory, because refs just can't call all of them."

Kent was an assistant under Montgomery at Stanford for two years before becoming head coach at St. Mary's and taking the Gaels to the NCAA Tournament in 1997. That landed Kent back at his adored alma mater, where he has been preaching the wonders of Oregon's venerable McArthur Court, a facility Green, who previously had been at Kansas and North Carolina, wanted to restructure.

Before all that traditional American success, Kent spent eight years (1980-87) in Saudi Arabia, using three of those years coaching al- Khaleej Club, which was based in Sayhat.

It was different. For the first two years there, he and his wife lived in a Shiite Muslim village, surrounded by the Arab lifestyle.

"And the games were played in arenas of 10,000 people, men only," Kent said. "My wife was the only woman in the building. And they scheduled halftime so it would fall at prayer time, so at halftime everyone would leave the building to pray. My wife and I were the only ones still inside, and we waited until they came back."

The difficulty from a coaching standpoint was that three-quarters of Kent's players spoke no English.

"We had a translator for everything I said," Kent said, "so a typical two-hour practice took four hours. That taught me patience."

He was not so patient at Oregon, realizing he needed to bring in junior-college players "to bridge the talent gap" with the rest of the conference. Standout point guard Darius Wright, leading scorer Alex Scales and No. 3 scorer Bryan Bracey are three of the six JC transfers and one Division I transfer on the Ducks' roster.

They are not like Harter's Ducks.

"We're completely different," Kent said. "We're more athletic now, but I think we (under Harter) were tougher, more tough-minded. Part of that was Harter and part is the changing of the times."

The current Ducks use their athleticism to run up and down the court. It's the same system Kent used at St. Mary's, one very different from the one Montgomery uses. So far Montgomery has worn out of his former assistant, winning all five games against Oregon since Kent took over the Ducks.